Monitoring Train Railway Lines with an RTL-SDR and ATCS Monitor

Back in June Gus Gorman showed us via a YouTube tutorial and demo on how to monitor ATSC (Advanced Train Control System) signals from trains. ATSC is found in the USA and is used for things like communications between trains, rail configuration data, train location data, speed enforcement, fuel monitoring, train diagnostics and general instructions and messages. Gus used an RTL-SDR and the ATSC Monitor software to decode the signals and give us a view of the current state of the railway line.

In his latest video Gus gives a better demonstration of the software by parking outside a train station so that he can receive many more signals from the trains. At the start of the video he shows the track view of BNSF trains, and then later switches over to the Union Pacific track view.

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What is RTL-SDR

The RTL-SDR is an ultra cheap software defined radio based on DVB-T TV tuners with RTL2832U chips. The RTL-SDR can be used as a wide band radio scanner. It may interest ham radio enthusiasts, hardware hackers, tinkerers and anyone interested in RF.